(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) As one of SiriusXM’s top former draws unleashed a vicious diatribe against supporters of GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, the satellite-radio company unveiled plans for a weekly show with Trump’s top primary rival, in what may be a last-ditch bid to salvage some of its Republican subscribers.
Washed-up shock-jock Howard Stern, the puerile radio star whose bits include detailed speculation of his 96-year-old mother having sex with his friends, recently took his well-documented Trump Derangement Syndrome to a new level, according to Outkick.
Howard Stern says he "hates" anyone who votes for Trump and demands they stop listening to his show.
"I hate the people who vote for Trump. I think they are stupid. I have no respect for them."
He then compared Trump to Hitler, again.https://t.co/TWWZIDeClJ
— OutKick (@Outkick) September 16, 2024
“This whole idea of ‘you like me, you are good, and if you don’t, you are bad’ … I’ve been the victim of this,” Stern whined on his Monday show, responding to Trump’s recent criticism of Taylor Swift following the pop superstar’s endorsement last week of Kamala Harris.
“I don’t hate Trump. I hate the people who vote for him,” Stern continued. “I think they are stupid. I do. I have no respect for them.”
In one moment of clarity, the 70-year-old entertainer acknowledged that his career was essentially at its end—although he has spent the past several decades claiming he would retire while griping about his job.
“I’m at the end of my career, so f**k you and listen to another station if you don’t like my views,” Stern told Trump voters.
Once considered a free-speech icon and trailblazer in promoting edgy comedy over the radio airwaves, Stern took a dark turn toward aggressive censorship and Nazi-like persecution of vaccine skeptics during the COVID pandemic—which ultimately cost him his credibility among many listeners.
Howard Stern called 'Woke'. He responds. Sound up 🔈 pic.twitter.com/df2kCpSQ8W
— Don Lewis (@DonLew87) September 20, 2023
However, he has unabashedly embraced his new woke persona—a move that some have speculated may be penance to keep the leftist elites in his Manhattan social circles from canceling and stigmatizing him for his past indiscretions.
Those include inappropriate comments about underage girls and overtly racist gags, some of which involved him wearing blackface while using the n-word.
Here is a rare clip of Howard Stern in Black Face using the term ‘smelly nigga’ in 1993. pic.twitter.com/2dEzwhkb4J
— Dom Lucre | Breaker of Narratives (@dom_lucre) November 10, 2023
Trump—a fellow brash, unfiltered New Yorker who once ran in the same celebrity circles and made regular appearances on Stern’s show prior to his career as a Republican politician—called out Stern as “weak” and irrelevant in a Truth Social post last year.
“The real Howard Stern is a weak, pathetic, and disloyal guy, who lost his friends and MUCH of his audience,” Trump wrote. “… His influence is gone, and without that, he’s got NOTHING – Just a broken weirdo, unattractive both inside and out, trying like hell to be relevant!”
The real Howard Stern is a weak, pathetic, and disloyal guy, who lost his friends and MUCH of his audience. Until just recently, I haven’t heard his name mentioned in years. I did his show many times in the good old days, and then he went Woke, and nobody cares about him any… pic.twitter.com/qddQwgP0xm
— Donald J. Trump Posts From His Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) September 23, 2023
Stern, who moved to SiriusXM in 2006 after long squaring off against corporate and government censorship of his controversial “comedy,” once lorded over the satellite airwaves as its top draw.
Ironically, his attack on pro-Trump conservatives may push the company he helped build to double-down on its outreach to Republicans, who might otherwise consider canceling their subscriptions in protest following successful boycott campaigns against woke corporations like Bud Light, Tractor Supply and Lowe’s.
Notably, former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley is launching her own radio talk show next week on SiriusXM that’s set to air once a week at least through the inauguration of a new president.
Haley, the former South Carolina governor who served as United Nations ambassador under Trump, is no stranger to the ex-president’s attacks. During the GOP primary campaign, Trump dubbed her “Bird-Brain.”
However, the two opted to mend fences shortly before the Republican National Convention in July, where she was featured as a speaker and reiterated her endorsement of Trump for president as the party’s duly elected nominee—in stark contrast with the Biden coup that Democrats undertook following a nominal primary that strongly discouraged any challengers.
Haley will do interviews, take listener calls and talk politics on the show, which will be carried Wednesdays from 8 to 9 a.m. ET on the satellite radio system’s Triumph channel. Expect some talk mixed in about Clemson football, her passion for running and music—maybe even Taylor Swift.
While her own politics won’t be a secret, she said she wanted to get away from some of the tribalism that dominates the media.
“My kids, they don’t watch the news, because they think both sides are crazy,” she told the Associated Press. “And they’re not wrong about that. I think we have to take the craziness out. I think we have to take the noise out and I think we have to break things down in a way that people feel empowered.”
Haley said Tuesday that Trump’s team had reached out to hers in the past two weeks to discuss some options for joint appearances, though none have been scheduled.
Her radio show, however, “is not going to be about campaigning for a particular candidate,” she added.
She said she’d been approached by some partisan news outlets about doing some work for them but wasn’t interested. She didn’t identify them. Her campaign, she said, taught her how the media is tainted and partisan outlets are predictable.
“I think that’s what Americans are tired of,” Haley said. “They don’t want to go on and watch a news show and know exactly which candidate they’re pushing and exactly what politics are pushing,” Haley said.
“They want to know the issues,” she continued. “They want to know exactly how it’s going to affect their family. I want to take all of the politics out and really break it down on a policy level.”
Haley said she’s open to continuing the show past January “if Americans like what they hear.”
Ben Sellers is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/realbensellers. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
